


The Physicist

by gertie_flirty



Category: Big Bang Theory, Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-14
Updated: 2011-04-14
Packaged: 2017-10-18 01:56:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/183694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gertie_flirty/pseuds/gertie_flirty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Write for Relief fic for ladyhouston . Prompt was: “Turns out Sheldon’s a Time Lord. He takes Penny along as a companion."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Good Time

“Sheldon, I’m sorry!”

Penny reached out to touch Sheldon’s shoulder as he started up the stairs. He paused and turned, glaring at her. He was angrier than she had ever seen him, and she pissed him off quite often.

“’Sorry?!’ Sorry doesn’t un-spill the ice tea you dumped on an extremely rare issue of Action Comics!” He spun around and continued his march up the stairs, with Penny trailing after him.

“Did you ever think you shouldn’t bring rare comics to the Cheesecake Factory?”

“So now you’re blaming me for your clumsiness.”

“No, I was just saying you should’ve thought it through. I mean, why bring the comic to the restaurant in the first place?”

“I was planning on bringing it to the comic book store to trade to Stuart for a copy of an even rarer issue of Uncanny X-Men.”

Penny froze, two steps before they reached the fourth floor. “You mean you weren’t even going to keep it?!”

He scoffed. “Of course not. It was an investment. Now I have to dig through my collection and find something else to sell instead. It will take hours, thanks to you.”

“What do you mean, ‘thanks to me?’” she asked indignantly as he opened the door to his apartment.

“Ever since you disorganized them during our prank war, they’ve never been categorized correctly.”

Penny was quiet for a moment. She had really screwed up. “Well, how ‘bout I help you sort them out again?”

Sheldon gave her a stern, appraising look. After a long while, he finally relented. “Fine. But wear gloves. And no liquids!”

~x.~x.~x.~x.~x.

And this is how Penny came to be sitting in the middle of Sheldon’s bedroom floor (during an absolutely gorgeous Saturday afternoon) surrounded by long cardboard boxes. Sheldon had another set of empty boxes on his side of the room. He refused to let her read any of the comics, even some of them that looked kind of interesting. Penny really wanted to read the Cloak & Dagger ones; they seemed like a cool love story with superheroes.

Sheldon adamantly refused.

She found herself longing to open the flap of those little plastic bags, to slide the books out carefully, wishing she could hear that small swish they made against the board that kept them stiff. To carefully open the cover and smell the newsprint; to look at the vibrant art and read the witty dialogue. To follow the adventures of Spider-man or the Justice League and watch as they defeated evil once and for all.

Dear Lord, she thought. I’m becoming one of them.

“One of what?” Sheldon asked, his head buried in his task by the desk.

She hadn’t realized she had spoken out loud. “A nerd.”

“Well, you do know a surprising amount of trivia about Star Trek,” Sheldon replied, marking down something in a notebook.

Penny stuck out her tongue, but he didn’t notice. She sighed and reached into another box and felt something strange. When she pulled it out, she found it was a silver pocket watch. The metal was surprisingly cool to the touch and it had a strange design etched onto the cover.

“Neat watch, Sheldon.”

“Watch?” He looked up at her questioningly.

“Yeah, this one.” She held it up by its chain so it dangled slightly in the air.

“A fob watch,” he said quietly, watching as it moved slowly back and forth. “I’ve had it . . . since I was a child. But I never noticed . . .”

Penny was a bit nervous. Sheldon’s voice sounded far away and dreamy. She wondered if she was hypnotizing him. When he reached out, carefully, his fingers stretched out eagerly, she handed the watch to him readily.

He took the watch in his hand and stared at it intently. A light seemed to come over his eyes, and a breeze swept through the room. Penny began looking around in fright, positive she could hear a voice whispering in the air.

Sheldon ran his thumb over the cover of the watch, feeling the lines grooved into its surface. He raised his finger to the fob at the top and pressed down.

The cover opened and the room filled with a swirling golden light. Penny cried out in surprise and covered her eyes from the intense brightness. She peeked out between her fingers, and the light dissipated quickly.

No.

It was going into Sheldon.

When the light seemed to be completely—absorbed? The thought made Penny’s brain hurt. But when the light was gone, Sheldon sat up absolutely straight for a very brief second, then fell over onto the floor.

“Sheldon!” Penny squeaked and did an awkward walk-crawl to his side of the room. Shaking his shoulder, she said, “Sheldon! Sheldon, are you okay?”

He didn’t respond and she slowly slid her fingers up to her neck to feel for a pulse. She managed to find it, but the rhythm of it felt weird.

With a loud gasp, he sat up with a jerk, eyes wide. He looked around the room, blinking wildly, until his face seemed to contort into an expression of extreme annoyance.

“Sheldon, what—what was that? What happened?”

He ignored Penny as he lithely jumped to his feet, and began muttering under his breath. “I can’t believe it—Earth, of all places, backwards, puny, human-infested, Earth! Now, where is it? It must be around here somewhere . . .”

Sheldon threw himself into his closet, digging frantically through boxes, tossing things off the shelves, throwing his action figures on the ground willy-nilly and stepping all over his comics. Penny hurriedly tried to catch a few of the toys and push the comic books out of the way, pleading with him the whole time.

“Sheldon, what is wrong with you? Did you get a concussion?” These were things he normally didn’t allow her to touch, and yet he was treating them as carelessly as wadded-up paper. Something was dreadfully wrong.  
“Aha!” He finally cried gleefully. “Here we go.”

He gingerly set the object down on the floor. Penny saw that it was a small toy castle. “Your Hogwarts model?”

Sheldon rolled his eyes impatiently. “It’s not Hogwarts, it’s simply a generic castle of no name.”

“Sheldon—“

“’Sheldon?’” His eyebrows arched in surprise, and he scratched his chin in consideration. “It’s a good a name as any, I suppose. I never liked the name my people gave me—the Scientist. It didn’t even approach the importance of the work I was trying to do—“

“Your people?” A chill ran down Penny’s spine.

“The Time Lords,” Sheldon replied, bending over to poke at the tiny castle. “If I recall correctly, there should be a button here somewhere . . .”

“What in the heck is a Time Lord?”

“Penny, I don’t have time for your ridiculous questions,” Sheldon said. “Now, stand back.”

In a sort of trance, Penny obediently took three steps backwards. Sheldon pressed down on something on the toy castle then jumped back quickly himself. An electrical hum filled the room, and an intricate webbing of blue sparks surrounded the small model. Thin bolts of violet lightning wove around the castle which seemed to be growing larger by the second. It finally stopped when it was about the size of a child’s playhouse.

A bit of dust fell swirled about the room as the crackling fell silent.

“What just happened?” asked Penny.

“I had to reverse the polarity on the Tardis’s spatio-reality field. Of course, once I get inside, I can reset the Chameleon Circuit so it assumes a more practical form.”

Penny blinked. “I don’t know what any of those words mean.”

Sheldon sighed in exasperation. He bent over at the waist and opened the small door on the front of the castle and shuffled inside awkwardly, shutting the door behind him.

Penny, her arms still full of toys and graphic novels, looked to her left. Then she looked to her right. She shrugged, shifted the load she was carrying into one arm, bent over and went into the castle.

She was ready to run into Sheldon’s bony, awkward knees, or to hit the other side of the castle’s wall pretty quickly.

What she didn’t expect was what was actually inside.

She was able to stand up straight. The ceiling was nearly twenty feet high, she could have stood up straight at least three times over. And it was huge. At least ten times the size of Sheldon’s bedroom, but relatively uncluttered with smooth white walls and a few odd looking portals on the side of the room.

“It’s –it’s bigger,” Penny said breathlessly. She looked towards the center of the large room, where Sheldon was standing in front of a large translucent column. The column had a console sticking out of it, with all sorts of levers, switches, and screens attached to it. “It’s bigger on the inside!”

“Of course it is,” Sheldon snorted. “It’s technically another dimension.”

“It’s a parallel dimension?”

“No, it’s a spaceship.”

“A spaceship?!”

“And also a time machine, technically.”

“A time machine?!”

“Yes,” Sheldon tapped his foot impatiently. “It’s a Tardis.”

“Sheldon, that’s not a nice thing to call me, I just—“

“No, you idiot, TARDIS is an acronym. It stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space. Understand?”

“Nope.”

Sheldon sighed. “Well, I don’t have the patience to explain it to you. I have to get ready to leave.”

“Where are you going?” Penny hugged the stack of geek paraphernalia to her chest and moved towards the column.

Sheldon stared straight ahead at a screen in front of him. Unfamiliar symbols and numbers flowed in complicated lines across it, but his gaze remained intense and unfaltering. “To find the man who did this to me.”

“Someone did this to you?”

“Yes,” Sheldon said, pulling a lever. “The Doctor.”


	2. A Dish Not Served

Some things made perfect sense. First of all, that Sheldon was an alien. Penny had suspected as much for years. Secondly, that he had pissed off one of his fellow aliens enough that he wound up being trapped as a human. Even though his Time Guy essence had wound up back in his body, or whatever, he was still acting like his arrogant, paranoid self. Penny thought it was rather nice of this Doctor guy to make Sheldon into a human instead of just turning him into a puddle of goo.

Penny could even wrap her head around there being a spaceship in the shape of child’s play castle that was somehow bigger on the inside. And that it was a time machine. All of these things weren’t that outlandish, really, not in the world she lived in. A world she had grown accustomed to, actually, with Star Treks and Wars and Back to the Futures, introduced to her by the nerds across the hall.

All of this she understood.

What she didn’t understand is why Sheldon was bringing her along.

As he had flipped the lever, something inside the translucent column had begun to move up and down, and a grating hydraulics noise rocked the ship. Penny was thrown off balance, and the toys she had been holding fell to the ground. She grabbed onto the console desperately.

“What’s going on?!”

“We’re taking off, obviously,” Sheldon retorted, but Penny was secretly pleased to see he was holding onto the console as well, his feet slipping from under him.

“Taking off?”

“Yes, I’ve sent out a homing signal to find the Doctor’s Tardis, and my own—being a more advanced model, of course—is bringing us there.”

“Where is ‘there?’” Penny could feel desperation creeping into her voice.

Sheldon frowned, twisting a few dials, flipping a few switches. “I’m not sure.”

Penny’s face contorted into one of extreme exasperation.

There was a thump, and a whiz-bang, and the Tardis shook violently, then was still. Although he didn’t smile, a look of glee lit up Sheldon’s eyes. “We’ve landed. The Doctor must be close.”

“Landed? Landed where?”

“You have so many questions,” Sheldon said. He sighed loudly and glanced at a screen. “Ah, Myshalforia. It’s a planet that resembles prehistoric Earth, in a way.”

“What would the Doctor be doing here?”

“No idea,” Sheldon said. “He always did have a distasteful appetite for adventure.”

With that, he spun on one heel and opened the tiny door that led outside. Penny could have sworn he had mentioned changing the castle into a more appealing form, but it seemed to have slipped his mind. Penny crouched down and followed him outside.

Once she was outside the castle, she stood up straight and looked around. The grass was long and had a bluish tint to it, and there were large ferns everywhere. They seemed to be in front of a lake, but it was like no lake Penny had ever seen. Large creatures with long necks swam lazily through the water, poking their heads up and letting out contented mooing sounds at occasional intervals. It reminded Penny very much of the Land Before Time, one of her favorite movies as a kid.

What surprised her most was the sky. She looked straight up and gasped. The sun was shining, brightly, yellow and clear, but the sky was more purple than blue, and the moon was in the air at the same time. No, not moon. Moons. Two of them.

“Two moons,” Penny whispered in shock. “Two. Moons.”

From the moment Sheldon had opened the watch, Penny had felt a bit numb. The feeling of surprise had never fully left her, causing her to delay any kind of real reaction. But now, standing on a real alien planet, with real alien creatures, in front of a real alien spaceship, everything sunk in all at once. All those crazy movies and television shows and comic books, they were all real, somehow, and here was the proof.

Sheldon had no reaction whatsoever, he had simply stormed out of the Tardis and over to what appeared to be a blue wooden phone booth a few feet away.

“What is that?” Penny asked.

“It’s the Doctor’s Tardis,” Sheldon replied, anger clouding his voice.

“It looks like something out of Bill and Ted.”

Sheldon grunted, but didn’t reply. That’s when Penny realized he hadn’t grunted at all, but had laughed. Which was probably the weirdest thing she’d seen all day.

Sheldon walked up to the phone booth and banged on the door three times. “Doctor?”

Oh Lord, Penny thought.

He banged three more times. “Doctor?”

“Is this really happening?” Penny asked no one in particular.

Bang. Bang. Bang. “Doctor?”

The door to the box opened, and a young man with short brown hair stood there. “Can I—can I help you?” He asked in a British accent.

Sheldon looked him up and down. “You’re not the Doctor.”

“No,” the man replied. “I’m Rory.”

“Well, where’s the Doctor?”

Rory looked at Sheldon, then looked back over his shoulder. “Doctor? There’s a man here to see you.”

Penny looked over Sheldon’s shoulder to the interior of the blue box. She wasn’t surprised to see it was also much larger on the inside.

“A man?” cried a voice from within. “On Myshalforia?”

“Yeah, and he’s got a blonde girl with him,” Rory called back.

“Blonde girl?” called out a woman’s voice.

“Yeah, her name is—“ Rory looked at Penny. “Sorry, what’s your name?”

“Penny.”

“Her name is Penny,” he replied back to the voice.

A tall red-haired woman emerged from behind a column very similar to the one in Sheldon’s ship. “Penny? Do you know anyone named Penny, Doctor?”

“No,” said a man in a tweed jacket who stepped out and stood next to the red-haired girl. “At least, not anyone blonde.”

“Doctor!” cried Sheldon. He pushed past Rory into the Doctor’s Tardis with Penny following behind him, bewildered. “I’ve come for my revenge!”

“Oh,” said the Doctor. “It’s you.”

“Hi,” said Rory, sticking out his hand in greeting to Penny. “I’m Rory.”

The red-haired woman made a shocked noise.

“And that,” Rory cleared his throat, “Is my beautiful wife, Amy.”

“Hello!” Amy waved cheerily.

“Hi,” Penny shook Rory’s hand. “I’m Penny.”

“Right, I knew that.”

Amy walked down the short ramp form the console to where they were standing. She also shook Penny’s hand and asked, “And who’s the man you brought with you?”

“Oh, it’s just Sheldon,” Penny replied. “He’s my neighbor. Well, he was my neighbor. Until today, he found out he was a Time Lord.”

“A what?” Rory asked.

“A Time Lord!” Amy whirled around and glared at the Doctor. “Do you mean to tell me you’ve been crying about being the last of the Time Lords for ages and all this time there was one just wandering around?”

“Well, I sort of—forgot,” the Doctor replied lamely.

“You forgot?!” cried Sheldon. “You stick me in a human body and just forget?”

“You have to understand, for me it was over five hundred years ago,” the Doctor said. “I was only on my second life!”

“For me, it was only thirty years, but I felt every one of them, thanks to you making me—“ Sheldon nearly spat out the last word—“Human.”

“You were dreadfully annoying,” said the Doctor. “I thought it would be good for you to live a human life. You were plotting to destroy the Earth, after all.”

“You were going to destroy the Earth?!” Penny cried.

“Not in actuality,” Sheldon said. “I merely proposed to the council that it would be more efficient---“

“TO DESTROY THE EARTH?!”

“Well—“

“And that’s why,” the Doctor interrupted, “I rewrote his biology. I thought if he went through a lifetime of what humans go through, he would have a better understanding of why it would be a bit rash to destroy them.”

“But he has a mom—“ said Penny. “And a dad, and a twin sister—“

“Yes,” said the Doctor. “That was the plan. He had to start at the beginning, and go through all the growing and crying and loving that mankind does. It was the only way.”

Penny scoffed. “Yeah, well, I don’t think your plan worked that well, Doc.”

“I don’t like being called Doc—“

“I think it rather suits you,” said Rory.

“And why,” said Penny, “If you’re both Time Lords, why do you sound British and Sheldon sounds American?”

“What are you talking about?” asked the Doctor. “I’m not British, I’m Gallifreyan.”

“Yeah, is that in Ireland?” replied Penny.

“Well, it’s not in Scotland,” said Amy.

“Gallifrey,” Sheldon’s nostrils flared a bit as he said this, “Is our home planet.”

“So it’s not Mars then?” Penny asked, putting a hand on her hip.

Amy giggled. “Oh, I like her.”

“Mars hasn’t been able to sustain life in millennia,” Sheldon said.

“Listen!” The Doctor put his hands up in the air, trying to silence the group. “I just have one question.” He put one hand in his pocket and turned to face Sheldon. “Do you still want to destroy the human race?”

Sheldon paused. “Well—“

“Sheldon!” Penny marched over to him and lifted herself up onto her toes to look him in the eye. “What about Leonard? Your best friend in the whole world?”

“He has betrayed me several times—“

“And Raj? And—well, maybe not Howard. But your mother? Your sister?” Penny added, in a very small voice, “What about me?”

Sheldon stared down at her for the better part of a minute, eyebrows raised. He let out a deep breath, then turned to the Doctor.

“No,” Sheldon said in voice like that of a scolded child. “I don’t want to destroy the human race.”

“Splendid!” The Doctor clapped his hands together. “I suppose we’re done then. Rory will show you the door.”

“I will?” asked Rory.

“And do try not to rush through your regenerations, I really don’t feel like being the last of the Time Lords again.”

“What do you mean ‘last?’” asked Sheldon. “What happened to the others?”

Silence immediately fell over the room. Penny, Amy, and Rory all shuffled awkwardly, even though Penny wasn’t exactly sure why.

“There was a war,” the Doctor began, very slowly. “A Time War. With the Daleks.”

“And we lost?”

“They lost as well. No more Daleks, but also no more Time Lords.”

Sheldon’s face moved very slightly. A drooping of the eyebrows, a downward tug at the corner of his mouth. “I see. And it’s Time-Locked, I presume?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re the only one who survived?”

“Well, the Master did. But he’s gone now.”

“I see.” Sheldon cleared his throat and looked at the ground, nodding. “I see.”

Penny reached out to touch his shoulder. “Aw, sweetie—“

“I’m fine.”

Everything was quiet for a very long time.

“I have a question,” said Amy loudly. “What sort of Time Lord name is ‘Sheldon?’ I mean, I always thought going by just ‘The Doctor’ was ridiculous.”

“What’s wrong with ‘The Doctor?’” the Doctor asked.

“Well, it does sound a bit—“ Rory shrugged. “Medical.”

“It’s his human name,” said Penny. “Sheldon, I mean.”

The Doctor chuckled. “So, I guess you assimilated quite well after all. If you ended up preferring your human name over your Time Lord one.”

“You know I never cared for that name,” Sheldon said. “It was clearly inferior.”

“And Sheldon is superior?” asked Amy, bewildered.

“Doctor,” said Sheldon, ignoring her. “May I speak to you? Privately?”

The Doctor lifted his chin and looked at Sheldon appraisingly. “I suppose.”

“Well, that’s fine,” said Amy. “Penny and I were just going to go and have a big girlie talk anyway.”

“We were?” asked Penny.

Amy smiled and linked arms with the other girl. Her eyes twinkled a bit as she said, “Yes. We were.”


	3. Which One

Rory stood awkwardly near the door of the Tardis. Sheldon and the Doctor were standing on the upper lever by the Time Column talking in low tones. Occasionally, the Doctor had pointed to a lever or pointed out something on the console and Sheldon would nod solemnly. Rory had wandered over towards them and the Doctor had shooed him away saying, “Time Lord talk, Rory.”

So Rory had went down to the lower level to talk to the girls who were whispering and giggling like long-term conspirators. They had went silent when he came near and simply glared at him until he turned and walked away.

He wondered desperately what everyone was talking about.

If he had known what Sheldon and the Doctor were talking about, he most likely would have been bored to tears. It was mostly technical things, well, as technical as the Doctor could get, he had a lot of made-up words for the various switches and dials used to pilot the Tardis that Sheldon hardly cared for.

Amy and Penny were having a conversation that was a bit more interesting.

“And does he talk really really fast using words you’ve never heard of?”

“Constantly,” said Penny. “I don’t understand half the crap coming out of his mouth.”

“It must be in the Time Lord DNA,” Amy laughed. “Listen, though, are you going to go with him?”

Penny was puzzled. “Go with him? Where?”

“Anywhere,” Amy said. She was excited. Wiggling her fingers around, she added, “The whole of time and space is at your fingertips.”

“But why would he want me to go with him?”

“Well, I only know one Time Lord. But from what I can tell, they’re very lonely. He’s had companions before me and Rory, you know,” Amy tugged at the end of shirt. “I don’t know how many, but from the stuff I found in the library, it looks like there were quite a few.”

“I still don’t understand why,” Penny replied.

 

“Sometimes . . . “ Amy hesitated. “Sometimes, they get carried away. They need someone to remind them why they do what they do. I’m not sure I’m explaining myself very well. But Penny, if he does ask you to go with him—and he will—you go. Don’t even think about, just stop whatever you’re doing, and you go. The whole universe is different after that, from the tiniest atom to that big old chunk of sky at night. It’s worth it.”

“Well,” Penny said. She took a deep breath and looked up through the glass floor to where Sheldon was standing with the Doctor. He looked the same—smart, serious, intent. She wondered if he would still wear plaid pants and non-matching shirts. She wondered if he would still be upset that Firefly had been unjustly cancelled after one season. She wondered if he had a particular spot where he needed to sit in the Tardis. “Of course I’ll go.”

Amy grinned and hugged her tightly.

RRRRRRRRRRRRRORRRRROBRRRORM.

 

The ground shook violently and Penny and Amy were thrown off balance. “Doctor!” Amy cried, running up to the top level, Penny close behind. “What was that?”

“Not sure, not sure,” the Doctor said. Both he and Sheldon were frantically turning dials and flipping switches. The Doctor pulled the monitor down from above and pressed a few buttons. “Oh dear. It appears to be—well, it’s close to Earth’s dinosaur—“

“Dinosaur?!” shrieked Penny.

Rory had opened the door of the Tardis and was looking outside. “From the looks of it, it’s headed this way.”

RRRRRRRRRRRRRORRRRROBRRRORM.

“Penny, come on, we have to get back to our Tardis,” Sheldon said, hurriedly rushing to the door.

“Our—“ Penny started, but Amy gave her a friendly shove.

“Don’t question it, just go.” The girls hugged again, and Penny ran down the ramp, waving behind her.

“It was nice meeting you all—Doctor, Rory—“ she paused and gave Rory a quick hug, causing him to blush slightly.

“Penny, we have to leave—“ Sheldon began.

“Don’t get your panties in a wad,” Penny said as she ran out the door. Sheldon was right behind her. He paused in the doorframe, turned, and nodded slightly at the Doctor. The Doctor nodded once, slowly, in return. With that, Sheldon was gone.

“Oh, I liked them,” said Rory. “They were nice.”

 

~x.~x.~x.~x.~x.~x.~x.

 

Once outside, Penny managed to get a glimpse of the large creature. It looked roughly similar to a T-Rex, only a bright red color (then again, maybe T-Rexes had been bright red, how would she now), with arms that seemed much longer and fuller, as though it could actually run on all fours if it wanted to. It also seemed to have two eyes on each side of its head, for a total of four, and long, deadly looking spikes on its tail. It was still fifty feet away, but gaining fast. Trees looked tiny beneath, and it towered over the forest. The lake creatures had all made fearful mooing noises and were diving into the water like submarines.

“Whoa,” said Penny, letting out a deep breath.

“No time,” said Sheldon, grabbing her hand. “Come on!”

They scurried in a panic to the little castle and awkwardly shuffled inside as quickly as they could. The ground shook with another roar and a smash as they slammed the door behind them. They ran up to the console, Sheldon giving her orders.

“Third lever on your right—pull that cord—the green button---and here we go—“

The Tardis lurched in a similar fashion as it had before when they had left the apartment, and unbeknownst to Penny, theirs and the Doctor’s ship were disappearing at the exact same moment a giant clawed foot set down in the grass.

After the floor stopped shaking and things were quiet, Penny opened her eyes. She hadn’t realized she had squeezed them shut in fear until that moment. “Are we safe?”

Sheldon smiled. “Yes. We’re clear.”

“Wow,” said Penny. “Just wow. That was really exciting.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” Sheldon crossed his arms and leaned back against the console, satisfied with himself.

Penny only smiled and went over to one of the windows on the side of the Tardis. It was small, and in the same shape as the windows on the play castle. Outside, she could see the violet, swirling mass of the universe. Stars shone in every color at various distances, and she wondered how many of those were not stars at all, but alien planets, full of more dinosaurs or little gray men, or those guys from Star Trek with the weird foreheads. She knew what wasn’t out there. Nebraska. The Cheesecake Factory. Her acting career.

“Well,” said Sheldon, stepping up behind her. “Where would you like to go first?”

If he asks you to go—and he will—you go.

“I think I’d like to start small,” Penny said. “How ‘bout the moon?”

Sheldon did something very un-Sheldony, then, something that maybe was because he was a reformed evil genius, maybe because he was a Time Lord, maybe because he had learned his lesson.

He reached out and took her hand in his.

Without looking at her he gazed out the window, seemingly lost in thought.

After a very long moment he said simply:

“Which one?”

 

~x.~x.~x.~x.~x.~x.~x.

The End

~x.~x~x~x.~x.~x.~x.

 

 

Epilogue:

 

Thursday night. Leonard came home with a big paper bag full of Chinese food. Howard and Raj were already in his apartment, sitting on the couch playing video games. They exchanged a few greetings and expressions of hunger. Raj eagerly opened up his box of lo mein and dug in greedily.

“You know,” he said after a few bites. “I feel like I haven’t seen Sheldon in a really long time.”

“Come to think of it,” said Leonard. “Penny hasn’t been by lately either.”

“Eh,” Howard said shrugging, “I’m sure they’re around somewhere.”

Leonard paused. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”


End file.
